President Mnangagwa’s plane targeted in laser strike

A multi-agency probe is in progress following reports that President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s pilots were targeted with a ground later strike as they approached Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport.

According to Zimlive, the president was returning from a trip to Mozambique when the incident apparently occurred on July 12 shortly before 7 PM on an Air Zimbabwe Boeing 737.

According to accounts, the pilots reported being blinded by lights that looked like lasers as they approached the airport.

A multi-agency investigation comprising the Zimbabwean Air Force, Police, Civil Aviation Authority, and intelligence agencies has been initiated, with authorities taking the incident “very seriously.”

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Presidency spokesman George Charamba declined to discuss the exact nature of the identified threat, saying doing so would “jeopardise investigations currently underway.”

“I can confirm the incident which has affected or menaced many other airports, foremost Gatwick in England. The misdemeanour has to be nipped in the bud,” he said.

Investigators will also be seeking to establish if there is a link to recent unsolved break-ins at the private homes of the president; his son, David, and the offices of his nephew, Tongai Mnangagwa, during which nothing of value was taken.

Shining a laser at airplanes landing or taking off, known as a laser strike, is widespread in Europe and the United States but there are no previously disclosed incidents in Zimbabwe.

High-powered lasers can interfere with pilots, distracting, disorienting, or even temporarily blinding them during critical phases of flight. The United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), in a report released in January this year, said the highest number of laser strikes occur at low altitudes and at night when pilots are busy with take-off or landing procedures.

There were 9,652 laser strike incidents which occurred below 10,000 feet in 2023, the FAA said.

In the United Kingdom where penalties for offenders can result in five-year jail sentences, just over 1,000 laser strikes were recorded, according to the British Airline Pilots Association.

Laser strikes cause no known airplane crashes, but they tend to have medical consequences for pilots who are required for safety and health reasons to take an ophthalmology evaluation and go on medical leave after such incidents.

Mnangagwa is in his second and final five-year term as president, but his loyalists want him to stay on at least until 2030, which legal experts say would be unconstitutional.

He maintains that he will retire when his term ends in 2028, but not many are convinced, pointing to his reluctance to kill the growing lobby among his supporters.

The uncertainty is reportedly causing consternation in Zanu PF, especially among supporters of his deputy Constantino Chiwenga, seen as his likely successor.